


ice cold, meltdown

by knoxoursavior



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:02:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23652046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knoxoursavior/pseuds/knoxoursavior
Summary: Yut-lung can't remember what warmth feels like.
Relationships: Blanca & Lee Yut-Lung, Lee Yut-Lung & Sing Soo-Ling
Comments: 4
Kudos: 37





	ice cold, meltdown

**Author's Note:**

> found this wip from abt a year ago that was supposed to be for rarepair week and decided to finish it. it was intended to be buraleeiji where they all go to the caribbean i think and i wish i lived in an alternate universe where thats how i actually wrote it.

Yut-lung can't remember what warmth feels like.

Well. He does, faintly. He remembers impressions of it, remembers a hazy blanket of its comfort alongside the memory of silky hair tangled in between his fingers. He remembers a soft voice, lulling him to sleep, and warmth wrapped around him that pulsed along to the beat of his heart.

He remembers skin as fair as his, but so,  _ so _ warm. Alive.

It's been almost a decade since his last memory of it, and every year, it gets harder and harder not to let that warmth slip through his fingers. Some nights, it's all he thinks about—the faint imprint left on his skin of a gentle touch on his cheek, of lips on his forehead, kissing him goodnight, of a heartbeat under his ear, loud and clear.

Yut-lung didn't know before, how rare that warmth is, how hard it is to come by, but he knows now; he's reminded everyday. He's learned to cope, to withdraw into himself instead of reaching out, to wrap his arms around himself in the middle of the night when his loneliness grows so much that it suffocates him.

He shouldn't. He shouldn't keep chasing after the idea, the memory of it. Warmth is weakness. He should know; he was born from a mistress who had too much of it.

But it's hard. It's hard when he passes by people who live like they're floating on air, basking in the warmth of the sun with little care for the consequences. It's hard when his brothers are made of ice, when the thought of becoming anything like them makes bile rise in Yut-lung’s throat. But that's the problem, isn't it? That is his burden to bear.

To kill his brothers, he must be better than them. But to be better than them, he must become like them first.

So he keeps his impressions of warmth locked up in a little box that he hides away in the darkest corner of his mind. He clings onto his ice-cold anger and lets it run through his veins, lets it sit and fester into a monster more ruthless than his brothers.

Eventually, he gets his revenge. He wipes his brothers out and wishes he could wear their blood on their skin for all the years they spent tormenting him. He grabs hold of their mangled bodies and climbs all the way to the top.

Their flesh only gets colder in death.

  
  


Eiji is weak, and Ash is the fool gravitating towards him.

Yut-lung knows what it feels like to be drawn in by that kind of warmth. He knows the consequences, the aching wound it leaves when ripped away so suddenly.

Eiji is fire, burning steadily, and Ash can only melt away whenever he comes too close. Yut-lung hates it. Ash is—Ash is so cold that attempting to touch him feels like burning. He is confusing and brilliant and he could be so much more if only he weren't killing himself by getting attached to Eiji.

But that's not Yut-lung's problem. He sits on his throne and watches Ash destroy himself. He pulls strings that shouldn't be pulled. He is  _ not _ the one who gets Ash killed.

Because Ash does die, in the end, and Eiji withers away with him.

It's not Yut-lung's problem.

  
  
  


Blanca is an enigma, to say the least. He's like Yut-lung, but he isn't. He's thawed out, sun-kissed by the Caribbean sun. His hand on Yut-lung’s shoulder makes a shiver run up Yut-lung’s spine in more ways than one, and there's something in his eyes that makes Yut-lung wonder—maybe,  _ maybe.  _

Maybe he can stop too.

His brothers are dead. Golzine is dead. Ash is dead. There's no one else left to strike down, and perhaps that could mean that he's won, but it could also mean he's next.

And for some reason, Yut-lung isn't as afraid as he should be at the thought of it. He's afraid of his men turning on him, yes. He's afraid of exposing himself as a fraud, a pretender who leans clings onto an arm around his neck and rejoices at a hand around his elbow and dreams of even more.

But death cannot be much worse than living. At least if he's dead, he won't feel this awful, unsettling feeling in his chest. At least he won't be overwhelmed by this aching, this longing to see Blanca turn back and take his hand, to hear him say the words Yut-lung has been dreaming of longer than he'd like to admit.

_ Come with me,  _ Blanca says in his dreams.  _ I'll take care of you, so come with me.  _

Yut-lung always takes his hand, in those dreams. He boards a plane and lays his head on Blanca's shoulder to sleep away the hours before they land. Blanca's hand in his is warm and grounding.

But Blanca never comes back.

  
  
  


Sing is an oddity. An anomaly. He visits sometimes, calls. Sometimes, Yut-lung thinks he might actually care, but he has no reason to.

Who is Yut-lung to him, after all? He's caused Sing nothing but grievance, and it's the only thing he should get in return.

Sometimes, he pretends. Just sometimes. When Sing is prying an empty bottle from his hands. When Sing is carrying him to bed and tucking him in.

In those moments, Yut-lung wonders why Sing doesn't just take the knife Yut-lung hides underneath his pillow and use it to kill him. He's just biding his time, maybe. Luring Yut-lung into a false sense of security.

Someday, Yut-lung will hand the blade to Sing and dare him to do it.

  
  
  


There is one thing about Yut-lung that is warm. It's ironic, that he has to take a cool blade against his skin in order to let it out. Perhaps that's just the universe, playing its cosmic joke on Yut-lung once again.

A cool knife and warm blood oozing out of the gash he's cut across his own arm. It trickles from his arm to the tips of his fingers, down to the floor where it pools.

Yut-lung presses his hand against the gash and wonders how long it will keep him warm.

  
  


(Not long, but maybe that's for the better.)


End file.
